Hydrostor Co-Founder and CEO Curtis VanWalleghem

On this episode of Watt It Takes, we explore another approach to long-duration energy storage: compressed air. Curtis VanWalleghem, Co-Founder and CEO of Hydrostor, started the company in 2010 after confronting surplus power challenges at Bruce Power. Without a traditional founder background, he set out to build storage systems that use compressed air and underground hard rock caverns to deliver ten-plus hours of grid-scale power. What began as experiments with underwater balloons evolved into large-scale rock cavern projects and a major business model shift. Hydrostor transitioned from a technology provider to an independent power producer, securing PPAs and financing billion-dollar infrastructure projects. In this conversation, Curtis reflects on the realities of building something capital-intensive: raising early checks from friends and family, enduring more than 200 investor rejections, mortgaging his home, pivoting both technology and strategy, and learning how to finance projects at true infrastructure scale. Today, Hydrostor has raised over $550 million in equity, secured roughly $8 billion in revenue contracts, and is advancing a multi-gigawatt pipeline across North America and Australia. About Powerhouse Innovation and Powerhouse Ventures Powerhouse Ventures backs seed stage startups developing innovative software to advance clean energy, mobility, and industry. If you are thinking about building something in this space, get in touch with our team. Powerhouse Innovation is a best in class consulting firm, powered by the strongest energy innovation network, data and team in our industry. We partner with world's leading corporations, investors, and utilities to source and evaluate disruptive startups shaping the future of energy and industry. To hear more stories of founders building our energy abundant future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review.

If you spend any time on the water, you’ve probably heard the joke that the two best days of a boat owner’s life are the day they buy the boat… and the day they sell it.For today’s guest, that line isn’t just a joke. It’s a problem statement.Mitch Lee grew up around boats. He loved being on the water, but he also experienced firsthand how loud, smelly, maintenance-heavy, and frustrating boat ownership can be. And once electric vehicles started proving what was possible on land, one idea kept coming back to him: if electrification makes sense in cars on the road, it might actually make even more sense in boats on the water.Mitch is the co-founder and CEO of Arc, an electric boat company building both consumer and commercial vessels. Arc started in the premium wake sports market, selling directly to consumers and using those early boats to develop its electric propulsion technology. That platform is now being deployed in commercial applications, where electrification can improve reliability, lower costs, and support ports that want to electrify.Founded in 2021, Arc has raised over $110 million through its Series B and has scaled from delivering its first customer boat, which took two years to build, to now producing multiple boats per week, while also landing major commercial partnerships at working ports.In our conversation, Mitch walks me through his path that led to Arc, from a childhood fascination with stocks and compounding interest, to building and selling his first company in the personal finance space, to betting big on electric boats and what electrification can unlock on the water.About Powerhouse Innovation and Powerhouse VenturesPowerhouse Ventures backs seed stage startups developing innovative software to advance clean energy, mobility, and industry. If you are thinking about building something in this space, get in touch with our team.Powerhouse Innovation is a best in class consulting firm, powered by the strongest energy innovation network, data and team in our industry. We partner with world's leading corporations, investors, and utilities to source and evaluate disruptive startups shaping the future of energy and industry.To hear more stories of founders building our energy abundant future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review.

As an aging grid faces rising demand, increasing complexity, and more frequent stress events, one thing has become clear: we don’t just need more power, we need power that can show up at the right time, in the right place, and at the right price. What’s far less settled is how we get there. Should large energy users build their own power? Should they treat the grid as something to work around rather than work with? Or is there a way for new load to actively strengthen the grid by contributing capacity when it’s needed most?This moment is being shaped by real market signals. Just two weeks ago, PJM, the largest power market in the U.S., cleared its latest capacity auction at the market cap yet again, underscoring how tight supply has become and how quickly affordability pressures are building. As data center demand accelerates, those pressures are no longer abstract, they’re showing up in prices, planning decisions, and who ultimately pays.These questions have been a throughline for us this year on Watt It Takes. We’ve talked with founders working across the grid, from storage and interconnection to transmission and large-scale development. Today’s conversation brings many of those threads together.Dana Guernsey and her team at Voltus are tackling that challenge at the intersection of demand and supply, turning customer-side flexibility into dependable grid capacity. Voltus sits between energy users and grid operators, aggregating flexible demand from sources like demand response, EV charging, batteries, and onsite generation, and translating it into dispatchable capacity that markets value and pay for. Voltus’s business model is a value-share: the company monetizes that flexibility in energy markets and shares the resulting value with the customers providing it.Voltus operates across all major North American power markets, even in an industry where each ISO and RTO plays by different rules. Today, the company manages more than eight gigawatts of flexible capacity and supports tens of thousands of customer sites, with resources dispatched thousands of times each year.On this last episode of the year, I spoke with Dana Guernsey, Co-Founder and CEO of Voltus. We talked about her journey, from growing up in Queens, New York and coming of age around 9/11, to discovering energy markets during her time at EnerNOC, to founding Voltus while starting a family. That path shaped how Dana thinks about complexity, customers, and reliability, and ultimately led her to build Voltus into a platform designed to help make clean, affordable, and reliable power something we don’t have to trade off against growth.About Powerhouse Innovation and Powerhouse VenturesPowerhouse Ventures backs seed stage startups developing innovative software to advance clean energy, mobility, and industry. If you are thinking about building something in this space, get in touch with our team.Powerhouse Innovation is a best in class consulting firm, powered by the strongest energy innovation network, data and team in our industry. We partner with world's leading corporations, investors, and utilities to source and evaluate disruptive startups shaping the future of energy and industry.To hear more stories of founders building our energy abundant future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review.

​​As load growth pushes the grid to its limits, the energy transition increasingly depends on one technology: storage. Batteries are becoming the backbone of reliable, clean power, and according to a recent UBS analysis, AI-driven data centers are set to trigger a “boom cycle” for energy storage in the next five years.As more clean energy comes online and global energy demand surges, batteries are proving essential to a flexible and resilient grid. But operating them is complex. Unlike wind or solar projects driven by long-term contracts, storage assets must constantly make decisions about when to charge and discharge, how to capture value across multiple markets, and how to stay profitable in an increasingly volatile energy system.Michael Baker, Co-Founder and CEO of Tyba, is working at the center of this shift. His team builds the software that helps batteries make smarter decisions in real time, turning storage into a reliable and profitable part of the grid. Powerhouse Ventures is fortunate to be an early investor in Tyba, first backing them in their seed round in January 2023.About Powerhouse Innovation and Powerhouse Ventures Powerhouse Ventures backs seed stage startups developing innovative software to advance clean energy, mobility, and industry. If you are thinking about building something in this space, get in touch with our team.Powerhouse Innovation is a best in class consulting firm, powered by the strongest energy innovation network, data and team in our industry. We partner with world's leading corporations, investors, and utilities to source and evaluate disruptive startups shaping the future of energy and industry.To hear more stories of founders building our energy abundant future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review.

At a moment when our country can feel deeply divided, and when progress on clean energy can feel uncertain, this month's guest — former U.S. Secretary of Energy and two-term Governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm — couldn’t be timelier.It was the perfect moment to take stock of where we are as an industry. After years of historic progress, we’re now facing growing uncertainty about what comes next. The optimism that followed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the CHIPS and Science Act can feel harder to access — and yet gatherings like this live recording and New Dawn, our thousand-person sold-out annual party hosted the following evening, remind us how far we’ve come and how powerful it is when this community comes together.Special thanks to this year’s New Dawn Terawatt sponsors, Silicon Valley Bank and Wilson Sonsini, for helping make gatherings like these possible.For me, this interview was personal — and a bit of a full-circle moment. I’ve admired Governor Granholm for years. We first met over a decade ago, when she served as a judge for one of Powerhouse’s early hackathons, and even then, her conviction and optimism left a lasting impression.Her legacy in public service is one of transformation — from rebuilding Michigan’s economy to reshaping the Department of Energy’s role in accelerating the clean energy transition. At DOE, Granholm led an unprecedented expansion of clean energy deployment and manufacturing, rebuilding supply chains, creating jobs, and helping position the United States as a global leader in the energy transition.In a moment when federal leadership can feel disconnected from what our country truly needs for clean, abundant energy and lasting progress, Governor Granholm is a reminder of what grounded, forward-thinking, and empathetic leadership can achieve. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.About Powerhouse Innovation and Powerhouse Ventures Powerhouse Ventures backs seed stage startups developing innovative software to advance clean energy, mobility, and industry. If you are thinking about building something in this space, get in touch with our team.Powerhouse Innovation is a best in class consulting firm, powered by the strongest energy innovation network, data and team in our industry. We partner with world's leading corporations, investors, and utilities to source and evaluate disruptive startups shaping the future of energy and industry.To hear more stories of founders building our energy abundant future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review.

As we’ve covered in other recent episodes, the growth of data centers and the massive amount of power they require is reshaping the energy landscape. Today, I want to zero in on a specific challenge at the heart of it all: the watt bit spread, a phrase coined by this month’s guest. The Watt Bit Spread is the gap between the cost of electricity and the value of computing—computing meaning, the processing power behind AI, cloud services, and digital infrastructure. Bridging that gap is one of the keys to unlocking both data center growth and new power generation.Despite countless developers' promises of abundant “powered land,” very few can deliver what data centers and other energy-intensive industries actually need. It’s not just certainty of power timelines but also land, utility agreements, capital, and community support — all critical to reducing the constraints that make the watt bit spread so persistent. Too often, there’s a disconnect between real estate and utilities. Some companies know how to acquire land. Others know how to work with utilities. But rarely both. And even when those pieces come together, projects can still be stalled without community support, labor, or equipment. That’s where Brian Janous, Co-Founder and CCO of Cloverleaf Infrastructure, comes in—working to bridge the watt bit spread by aligning land, power, and communities to meet the surging demand for computing. Put simply, Cloverleaf buys land in dollars per acre and sells it in dollars per megawatt.SponsorsWatt It Takes is brought to you by HSBC Innovation Banking who is proud to bank some of the most exciting companies pioneering the technologies of tomorrow.With specialist financing support, deep understanding of the challenges, and a global network across more than 50 markets, they help clients scale breakthrough innovations and take them to the world. Infinium are a leader in ultra-low carbon synthetic eFuels and offer comprehensive energy system solutions to support the rapidly evolving energy industry. HSBC Innovation Banking have supported Infinium with project financing to scale their latest commercial-scale project, which on completion will be the largest eFuels project in the world.So, if you’re looking for early-stage funding, or well on your way to FOAK, click the link in the call notes to learn how HSBC Innovation Banking can help on the next stage of your journey.HSBC Innovation Banking is a business division with services provided in the United States by HSBC Bank USA, N.A.https://www.business.us.hsbc.com/en/innovation-banking-powerhouse-innovationAbout Powerhouse Innovation and Powerhouse Ventures Powerhouse Innovation is a leading consulting firm connecting top-tier corporations and investors, including corporate innovation teams, CVCs, and pensions with cutting-edge technologies and startups that meet their specific criteria for engagement. Powerhouse Ventures backs entrepreneurs building the digital infrastructure for rapid decarbonization. To hear more stories of founders building our energy abundant future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review.

The U.S. power sector serves more than 160 million electricity customers—across homes, businesses, and factories in all 50 states. But the grid that supplies that electricity wasn’t designed for the world we live in now, let alone the one that’s coming.Electrification is accelerating. Data centers—driven by the explosive growth of AI—are demanding more power than ever, often in places where the grid is already strained. And while decarbonization remains technically optional—for those serious about resilience, sustainability, and long term viability, it’s a necessity. These three forces—electrification, digitization, and decarbonization—are colliding, reshaping how our energy system works and who it’s built for.The challenge isn’t just technical. It’s structural. We are moving towards a world of abundant clean electricity—but too often, it’s available at the wrong time, or in the wrong place. Permitting and interconnection can add years of delays. And even when approved, major transmission projects often take decades to complete, if they manage to get built at all. And many of the rules that govern our electricity markets weren’t built for flexibility, speed, or innovation.So what if we didn’t wait for the system to catch up? What if we reimagined where clean power is built, who it serves, and how it’s delivered? What if gigawatt-scale clean energy projects were already breaking ground—designed to power data centers, industrial loads, and the digital infrastructure reshaping our world?That’s exactly what Sheldon Kimber, Co‑Founder and CEO of Intersect Power, is doing: imagining a better energy future, and then building it—faster than anyone thought possible.SponsorsWatt It Takes is brought to you by HSBC Innovation Banking who is proud to bank some of the most exciting companies pioneering the technologies of tomorrow.With specialist financing support, deep understanding of the challenges, and a global network across more than 50 markets, they help clients scale breakthrough innovations and take them to the world. Infinium are a leader in ultra-low carbon synthetic eFuels and offer comprehensive energy system solutions to support the rapidly evolving energy industry. HSBC Innovation Banking have supported Infinium with project financing to scale their latest commercial-scale project, which on completion will be the largest eFuels project in the world.So, if you’re looking for early-stage funding, or well on your way to FOAK, click the link in the call notes to learn how HSBC Innovation Banking can help on the next stage of your journey.HSBC Innovation Banking is a business division with services provided in the United States by HSBC Bank USA, N.A.https://www.business.us.hsbc.com/en/innovation-banking-powerhouse-innovationAbout Powerhouse Innovation and Powerhouse Ventures Powerhouse Innovation is a leading consulting firm connecting top-tier corporations and investors, including corporate innovation teams, CVCs, and pensions with cutting-edge technologies and startups that meet their specific criteria for engagement. Powerhouse Ventures backs entrepreneurs building the digital infrastructure for rapid decarbonization. To hear more stories of founders building our energy abundant future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review.

If cement were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world, behind only China and the United States. That’s because cement production alone accounts for about five and a half percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions. And while that might seem really high, it actually makes sense. Just look around you: from roads to bridges, sidewalks to buildings, cement is everywhere. It’s a critical building block of modern infrastructure.What’s striking about cement production is that most of the emissions actually come from the chemical reaction itself—not just from burning fuel to heat the kiln. Cement producers use limestone, a well-known carbon-storing rock we’ve highlighted in other episodes for its direct air capture potential. But when limestone is heated to make cement, the opposite happens: it releases carbon dioxide, accounting for about 60% of the sector’s total emissions. So even if you used 100% clean electricity to power the kilns, most of the emissions would still result from this chemical process.Limestone was originally selected as a main ingredient for cement largely because it was the cheapest option. But what if it wasn’t? What if there were other rocks we could use that didn’t emit greenhouse gases at all? Better yet, what if they could produce the ingredients for cement cleanly—and generate other products critical to industry?That’s exactly what Cody Finke, CEO and Co-Founder of Brimstone, is aiming to deliver: a way to make cement without the emissions—and create other essential industrial materials along the way.SponsorsWatt It Takes is brought to you by HSBC Innovation Banking who is proud to bank some of the most exciting companies pioneering the technologies of tomorrow.With specialist financing support, deep understanding of the challenges, and a global network across more than 50 markets, they help clients scale breakthrough innovations and take them to the world. Infinium are a leader in ultra-low carbon synthetic eFuels and offer comprehensive energy system solutions to support the rapidly evolving energy industry. HSBC Innovation Banking have supported Infinium with project financing to scale their latest commercial-scale project, which on completion will be the largest eFuels project in the world.So, if you’re looking for early-stage funding, or well on your way to FOAK, click the link in the call notes to learn how HSBC Innovation Banking can help on the next stage of your journey.HSBC Innovation Banking is a business division with services provided in the United States by HSBC Bank USA, N.A.https://www.business.us.hsbc.com/en/innovation-banking-powerhouse-innovationAbout Powerhouse Innovation and Powerhouse Ventures Powerhouse Innovation is a leading consulting firm connecting top-tier corporations and investors, including corporate innovation teams, CVCs, and pensions with cutting-edge technologies and startups that meet their specific criteria for engagement. Powerhouse Ventures backs entrepreneurs building the digital infrastructure for rapid decarbonization. To hear more stories of founders building our energy abundant future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review.

It’s been a few years since we last covered geothermal on Watt It Takes. Our 2021 episode with Tim Latimer, Founder and CEO of Fervo Energy, explored how next-generation geothermal was just beginning to emerge. Since then, the sector’s momentum has only grown.Meanwhile, electricity demand is rising fast, driven by data centers, AI, and the broader push to electrify everything. That’s putting pressure on the grid and renewing interest in consistent, around-the-clock power, often referred to as baseload energy.This is where next-gen geothermal comes in. It’s a new wave of technologies that could make it possible to harness the Earth’s heat in far more places. Instead of relying on rare natural conditions, these systems aim to tap into hot, dry rock deep underground—resources that could, in theory, be accessed across much of the country. And that’s what makes it so compelling: for the first time, we may be able to use this vast, untapped heat source almost anywhere to help power the grid.Just last week, the U.S. Geological Survey reported that enhanced geothermal systems, one of the most promising next-gen approaches, could technically supply up to 10% of the country’s electricity needs from Nevada’s Great Basin alone.Because some of these systems can also tap into existing oil and gas wells, geothermal is gaining support across the energy sector. It offers a way to reuse infrastructure, support local economies, and deliver reliable, affordable, and clean power. Other approaches show promise for energy storage and district heating, broadening geothermal’s role and offering new ways to complement renewables like wind and solar.That broad potential has helped earn steady bipartisan support. But the recently passed House reconciliation bill threatens to slow momentum by phasing out key tax credits and eliminating credit transferability. These provisions have been critical to financing new projects.Despite those headwinds, companies are continuing to push the boundaries of what geothermal can do. One of them is Sage Geosystems, led by CEO Cindy Taff. The company is advancing new applications of geothermal for energy storage, district heating, and dependable, clean electricity.SponsorsThis live recording, and this next season of Watt It Takes, is brought to you by our lead sponsor, HSBC Innovation Banking who is proud to bank some of the most exciting companies pioneering the technologies of tomorrow.With specialist financing support, deep understanding of the challenges, and a global network across more than 50 markets, they help clients scale breakthrough innovations, and take them to the world.So, if you’re looking for early-stage funding, or well on your way to First-of-a-Kind, click the link in the show notes to learn how HSBC Innovation Banking can help on the next stage of your journey.https://www.business.us.hsbc.com/en/innovation-banking-powerhouse-innovationAbout Powerhouse Innovation and Powerhouse Ventures Powerhouse Innovation is a leading consulting firm connecting top-tier corporations and investors, including corporate innovation teams, CVCs, and pensions with cutting-edge technologies and startups that meet their specific criteria for engagement. Powerhouse Ventures backs entrepreneurs building the digital infrastructure for rapid decarbonization. To hear more stories of founders building our energy abundant future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review.

You don’t meet many people like Jigar Shah.He’s one of the rare leaders who has shaped the clean energy transition from every angle — as a founder, as an investor, and most recently, as a government leader. If you know Jigar, you already know the headlines: He founded SunEdison, led Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room, co-hosted the Energy Gang podcast, co-founded Generate Capital, and most recently, ran the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, better known as LPO. If you don’t know Jigar, but you’re listening to this, chances are you’ve felt his impact. In 2024, Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.And fun fact, he’s also the very first guest to return to Watt It Takes for a second episode.For more than two decades, Jigar has been behind the scenes — and sometimes out front — helping scale the technologies and financing models that define today’s energy economy. But this episode isn’t about Jigar’s résumé; it’s about what it was like for him to join and lead LPO, what he learned in his four years in government, and what he’s carrying forward in this next chapter of his career. SponsorsThis season of Watt It Takes is brought to you by our lead sponsor, HSBC Innovation Banking who is proud to bank some of the most exciting companies pioneering the technologies of tomorrow.With specialist financing support, deep understanding of the challenges, and a global network across more than 50 markets, they help clients scale breakthrough innovations, and take them to the world.So, if you’re looking for early-stage funding, or well on your way to FOAK, follow the link below to learn how HSBC Innovation Banking can help on the next stage of your journey.https://www.business.us.hsbc.com/en/innovation-banking-powerhouse-innovationAbout Powerhouse Innovation and Powerhouse Ventures Powerhouse Innovation is a leading consulting firm connecting top-tier corporations and investors, including corporate innovation teams, CVCs, and pensions with cutting-edge technologies and startups that meet their specific criteria for engagement. Powerhouse Ventures backs entrepreneurs building the digital infrastructure for rapid decarbonization. To hear more stories of founders building our energy abundant future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review.